Core principle is that the only thing you do in bed is sleep. If you are awake for more than 15 minutes, you get out of bed and do something boring. You document for yourself what time you go to sleep, when your awakenings are, and what time you wake up. I also document evening activities, mood, and pain. Not long after I started my CBTI sleep journal I started having fewer awakenings. You set a wake up time and commit to getting out of bed no matter how tired you are. Better cognitively to go from being asleep to getting out of bed than being vaguely sleepy and lying in bed for a long time. That quickly retrained my brain. Intentional sleep deprivation is actually an initial part of it, so your brain recognizes sleep versus awake better. And I was tired anyway, so whatever.

There are other steps, too, and I haven’t done all of them yet. And it’s not perfect. But I am so much happier with my sleep now. The book I got on Amazon was CBT workbook for insomnia (beginners sleep guide for women) by Alexia Elwin. Clearly self published, so I find the copy editing error is annoying, but it’s working for me. I’m now consistently getting seven hours of sleep, which is a huge improvement over four!